KIDNEY, ANYONE? 55,000-mile AE86 Toyota Corolla

Like the beautiful brown Datsun 510 last week, this is not that AE86, but a lesser loved 1984 Toyota Corolla SR5. Still, it’s a 55,000-mile, RWD hachiroku, probably the best preserved example in the entire country and it’s on eBay right now.

Sure, it won’t have the legendary twin-cam 4A-GE, the GT-S suspension, or rear disc brakes. It doesn’t even have the Toyota T50 5-speed transmission. But just look at this thing. It’s practically a brand new car. Finished in High Metal Two-Tone (or gray panda for the layman), it looks like it came off the assembly line yesterday and its carbureted 4A-C is clean enough to eat off of.

Even if you did have a spare drivetrain laying around, getting it to GT-S spec would require replacing everything from the headlight eyelids to the fuel tank and nearly the entire interior too. Then again, would you really want to mess with such originality? What exactly would you do with a museum-quality SR5 automatic?

Someone will find out soon enough. As of the time of this writing, 29 bids have pushed the price up to $3,250. It’s too bad this isn’t a GT-S, because we’d wager you could add a zero to the end of that number. Check out the photo gallery below or head straight to the auction.

Look under the hood of any GT-S or SR-5 (model years 1984-1987) and on the firewall you’ll see at the very top “AE86”. The difference comes in on the actual vincode, where GT-S’s start out with “JT2AE88” and SR-5’s have “JT2AE86”. This doesn’t matter anyways, as those aren’t chassis codes, they’re vin codes, for registration purposes. BOTH cars are AE86 chassis’.

it would be hilarious if the buyer saw your comment and ruined the originality (arguably the only thing that gives this example the apparent value it has) by smoking his tail lights. i would probably fall out of my chair laughing.

I have mixed feelings about cars like these. Personally, I buy a car to drive, not look at, so I would prefer to see this auto in a museum or owned by someone who will put about 100 miles a year on it going to shows.

I would not buy it, because as soon as you do anything to it, like accumulate too many miles or do any kind of part swapping, you have lost the “value”.

I’m going to make the radical suggestion that this car be purchased as a daily driver. It’s too low spec and has too many miles to be a museum-grade “collectable,” but in a world where Camrys weigh two tons and 25 MPG is considered to be respectable gas mileage for a compact car, this SR5 makes a great deal of sense as an alternative for a JNC enthusiast/commuter looking to make a statement.